Nan Zhang, PhD student at the Institute of Regional and Country Studies, Peking University, Zan Tao, Is an Associate Professor in the Department of History at Peking University and Director of the Turkish Research Center
Since its establishment in 1923, the Republic of Turkey has adopted Türkiye Cumhuriyeti (i.e. Republic of Turkey, or Türkiye for short) as the name of its country, with the English name The Republic of Turkey (Turkey for short). But more recently, Turkey is struggling to get rid of the name Turkey, an effort that took its official fruit on June 1, 2022, when the United Nations agreed to register Turkey's English name as "Türkiye", officially replacing the old name "Turkey".
On May 20, 2022, local time, Istanbul, Turkey, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan spoke at a press conference. Tell NATO that the foreign language name should replace "Turkey" with "Türkiye".
Put it into practice: Turkey seeks to get rid of the name "Turkey"
Turkey's quest for a name change began at the end of 2021. On December 4, 2021, the Turkish Presidential Office issued a circular in the Official Gazette stipulating the use of "Made in Türkiye" instead of "Made in Turkey" in export products and the use of "Türkiye" as a national brand in various activities and communications. The specific provisions are as follows:
The word Türkiye best represents and expresses the culture, civilization and values of the Turkish nation. In this context, our export products will begin to use "Made in Türkiye" instead of "Made in Turkey" ... In the context of strengthening the Turkish brand, similar titles such as "Turkey", "Turkei", "Turquie" should be used in various activities and communications, especially in formal relations with other countries, international institutions and organizations. [1]
On January 13, 2022, Turkey launched the "Hello Türkiye" campaign to promote the use of "Türkiye" as the new name of Turkey on the international stage. As part of the campaign, the Presidential Press Office shared a video on social media aimed at promoting the use of "Türkiye" instead of "Turkey" as a way to strengthen Turkey's national brand. Fahrettin Altun, director of the Presidential Office's press office, said it was a manifestation of Turkey's strengthening of its self and identity in language and communication, as well as an important step towards building a unity of dialogue and consolidating its national brand on the global stage. He also said that Turkey will set up a Turkiye Brand Office to support the promotion of this campaign and will work in the field of global brand identity to contribute to strengthening its image and brand value. [2]
On May 31, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu formally submitted an application to the United Nations and other international organizations requesting that Turkey's English name be changed from "Turkey" to "Türkiye." [3] The following day, STEPHANE Dujarric, a spokesman for the UN Secretary-General, stated that they had received a letter from turkey's foreign minister to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, saying the request was effective immediately. [4] Since then, Turkey's international foreign language name has been officially changed to "Türkiye".
II. Historical Origins: Why Turkey Became "Turkey"
1. About Türk
In the sense of nationality and nation, modern Turks call themselves Türk, but historically, the more recent ancestors of turks, that is, the Ottomans, for most of the historical period, did not agree with Türk's name, they did not like others to call themselves, and certainly did not call themselves so. Since ancient times, there have been differences between how a group calls itself and what others call them.[5] The different Nomadic tribes that speak The Turkic language have their own identities and identities, and there is no unified identity of the so-called "Turks" or "Turks". Outsiders may have such a definition of them, for example, in the Persian-Arab cognition, they will be collectively referred to as "Turks", and the "Turkey" or "Turkic" mentioned here is a more generalized generalized term, obviously not a national identity in today's sense, so the two cannot be confused. [6] As the Ottomans grew in power, Westerners referred to these tribes or confederations of tribes or tribal confederations that were similar in appearance, language, custom, and religion active in Asia Minor as Türk,[7] which we generally translate as Turks and sometimes inaccurately as "Turks". However, in medieval Europe, Türk was not an ethnic group, but almost synonymous with "Muslim". Just as arabs, Turks, Persians, or Indians speak of "Franks," they are not referring to franks in the ethnic sense, but to Europeans in general.
At the same time, Europe has developed a historical narrative of Muslims. First of all, the strength of Muslims is undeniable, but in the eyes of those hostile to Muslims in Europe, they are at the same time "evil" and "unjust", the embodiment of "devil". Eventually, this historical narrative of Muslims was applied to Türk, so that for many medieval Europeans, Türk became synonymous with "immorality", that is, in many cases, Europeans had little affection for both Muslims and Turks. In Ottoman society, the name Türk was also rarely used, more often referring to nomadic Turkmens or Turkish-speaking, rude and ignorant peasants in the Anatolian countryside,[8] a perception that continued until the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Thus, in the eyes of europeans and in the eyes of the Ottomans themselves, the title of Türk was pejorative for a long time.
The shift in the term Türk to the modern concept of nationality began around the middle of the 19th century. Faced with a powerful West, the Turks began to learn from them either forced or actively, while also beginning to understand themselves through the West. In the process, the Turks came into contact with many Westerners' writings on the East. The materials of these writings were naturally obtained from the East, but these materials from the East were processed by the West and became part of "Orientalism". For the Turks, the process of translating the Turkish-related parts of Orientalism into the Ottoman Empire was the only way to understand themselves and construct their own identity through that system of knowledge. At the same time, it is also an important means of using Western intellectual and intellectual resources to eliminate the contemptuous view of history (whether religious or ethnic) toward Turkey. [9] Nationalists at the time sought to retelling their past, abandoning the traditional Ottoman view of themselves and abandoning the traditional narrative that equated themselves with Islam in favor of emphasizing the concept of Turkish race/ethnicity. The new ideology held that the masters of the Ottoman Empire were the Turks, and they even believed that the Turans were the so-called "Turanians" in a broader sense. At the beginning of the 20th century, the thinkers who came up with these ideas called themselves "young Turks", and although they were eager to free themselves from European control and more eager to build a modern state, they were still subject to Europe in the popular philological and prehistoric studies of the second half of the 19th century, because the words Türk and Tuanian were themselves the inventions of European philologists and political commentators. [11] Thus it can be said that the Turks' understanding of Türk today, both in the sense of nationalism and in the sense of ancient history, is partly the result of European re-education. Although the meaning of Türk has completed a gorgeous transformation, in essence, Turkey is still using the spear of Western intellectual resources against the shield of Western discourse, never escaping Western control.
Sofia Church in Istanbul in 1857
2. About Türkiye
Regarding the origin of the name Türkiye, the academic community has different views. One view is that Türkiye's name is the result of a combination of foreign transliteration and native word formation. [12] Turkey's own name, Türkiye, actually used the foreigner's "he name" as a "self-designation". In fact, Europeans began to call this place "Turkey" very early on, and after the rise of the Ottoman Empire, Europeans called it the Turkish Empire. According to the famous French scholar Bo xihe, by the time of Marco Polo (1254-1324), when the Ottoman Empire was still in its infancy, Europeans had already called Anatolia (that is, Asia Minor) Turkey (Turcia), but Marco Polo himself used Turcomanie more to refer to Anatolia, and "Gran Turchie" (Greater Turkey) to refer to the Chakhatai state of the Mongols in Central Asia. [13] From this point of view, the name Türkiye is most likely a transliteration of Turchie, and it is likely that the latter inspired the former.
In addition, there is a view in Turkish academic circles that Türkiye originated from the ancient Turkic language. They argue that the Türkiye in -iye evolved from the ancient Turkic word for édi, meaning "possessing" and "possessing", and in modern Turkish this meaning has also been retained. In the Orkhon inscriptions and Uighur texts, iye appears in the form of édi, idi/ége, etc.; It also appears in the Book of Dede Korkut in the form of éye/iye. [14] The second chapter of the Book of The Patriarch Korcout begins with this description of Salur Kazan: "... Ulaş oğlı, tülü kuşuñ yavrısı, beze miskin umudı, Amıt suyınuñ aslanı, Karaçuğuñ kaplanı, koñur atuñ iyesi, Han Uruzuñ ağası, Bayındır Hanuñ güyegüsi, kalm Oğuzuñ devleti, kalmış yiğit arhası Salur Kazan..."[15] to the effect that: "Salur Kazan, son of Ulash, chick of the long-feathered bird, hope of the unfortunate and helpless, lion of the Emet River, tiger of Karachuk, lord of maroon horses, father of Uruz Khan, son-in-law of Bayindil Khan..." Here, iye means "possessed" and iyesi means "possessor" and "master". By the same token, the name Türkiye is actually Türk plus iye, literally "owned by the Turks", and in fact "Turk's territory". From this point of view, the word Türkiye, the first half of the meaning of national identity is partly from Europe, and the second half may be from the ancient Turkic language, which is considered to be a "mixed race".
However, it was this name, which was so common in Europe, that caused a huge shock on the eve of the founding of Turkey. During Mustafa Kemal's leadership of Turkey in the War of Independence (1919-1922), there was much debate about the identities of "Ottomans", "Turks" and "Muslims", which were mainly reflected among nationalists and other non-nationalists. However, due to the urgency of the war, Mustafa Kemal adopted a "non-controversial" attitude on these issues, temporarily shelving the issue. [16] In the discussion of the new constitution, the conflict surrounding the word Türkiye erupted. On 13 September 1920, Mustafa Kemal and the Council of Ministers co-signed a draft of a new constitution. At the beginning of the draft, there is a section called "Objectives and Principles", which consists of four articles. In the first article, the term "Turkish Grand National Assembly" appeared, that is, the word Türkiye was added to the original name of the "Grand National Assembly". This seems to mean that a new state is being established or has already been established, and its name is Türkiye. Of course, there were objections when this term was changed, and they tried to replace "Turkey" with "Ottoman Empire", but they did not succeed. In the face of these arguments, the more convincing defense at the time was to think that Europe also called them "Turkey" (Türkiye), so they had no problem calling themselves Turkey. In 1924, Turkey promulgated its first constitution since the founding of the republic, formally establishing its country name as Türkiye in the form of a constitution. [17] From this point of view, one of the achievements of Turkish nationalism was the acceptance and recognition of the country called Türkiye.
3. About Turkey
The English name of Turkey is Turkey, which is homophone with the English word for "turkey" turkey, with only the initial case distinction. So why did Turkey get involved with turkey, and how did Turkey get into the English-speaking world? Linguist Mario Pei was one of the first to theoretically study this issue. [18] He speculates that in the 15th and 16th centuries, some Turkish merchants sold Guinea fowl from Guinea, West Africa, to European markets, which Europeans called "Turkey cock" over time, and finally simply called it "turkey". Later, the Europeans met another kind of large broiler domesticated by the Mexicans in the Americas, that is, the turkey we later became familiar with, which looked very similar to the guinea fowl, so the Europeans also called it turkey. Interestingly, the Turks do not refer to this chicken as a turkey, they call it a hindi (in Turkish, the word means both turkey and Indian) because the Turks consider the chicken to belong to India, but we are not quite sure when and exactly this claim began. The French originally called this American bird poulet d'Inde (chicken from India) and referred to it simply as dinde, with a similar expression used in Polish, Hebrew, and Catalan. In Dutch, kalkoen is an abbreviation for Caliciut-hoen, meaning "chicken from Caliciut" (Calicut, or Calicut, was a major trading center in India at the time). These "misconceptions" may have been caused by conflating the "New World" with India at the time, or the belief that the turkey trade was going through India. In addition to this, the Portuguese used the word peru to describe turkey. Although the animal is not a native animal of Peru, it is thought to have gained popularity during the discovery of the "New World" by Portuguese and Spanish explorers. The spread of Western colonialism complicated matters further, with Malaysians calling turkeys ayam blanders (Dutch chickens), while Cambodians chose the name moan barang (French chicken). All in all, the name turkey does come from "Turkey", but whether it is a guinea fowl or a turkey, the origin is not in Turkey. The connection between Turkey and turkey in English is just a common misunderstanding in the course of history and language development, and this misunderstanding is not only in Turkey, but also in some other countries of the world. Although it refers to the same animal, in different countries and languages, it is often called by the name of another country. The notable exception is Chinese, which is not referred to by the name of any foreign country. These phenomena reveal a wealth of information, that is, there is a history of the global movement of the "turkey" species.
16th century Turkish illustrations
Internal and external drivers: Why does Turkey want to get rid of "Turkey"?
As mentioned above, the name of a country is not just a title, it sometimes carries the history, identity and emotions of an entire nation. The reason why Turkey is eager to get rid of the English name Turkey is, of course, to beautify its image internationally, especially in English-speaking countries, but it also has domestic political considerations.
First, the most immediate reason is the need to rebuild the national brand. Although the word turkey is not a patent of Turkey, and there are examples of names for turkeys in other languages around the world, such as the Netherlands and France, it cannot be denied that in English turkey does mean "failure", "stupidity", and "incompetence", which is pejorative. With colonial-imperialism based on advanced industrial and commercial capitalism, English has long established linguistic hegemony around the world, and a large number of people in the world know the pun of turkey, that is, to refer both to a country and to a not-so-cute or "tall" animal, that is, a turkey. This is also the most direct reason why Turkey is currently trying to weaken or even abandon the name turkey. Turkey's approach has some legitimacy.
Historically, there have been many examples of attempts to re-establish a national brand through a name change. These countries were renamed for political reasons, for the purpose of harmonizing names, for the purpose of getting rid of the old names of the colonial era, and some countries, such as Turkey and the Czech Republic, were aimed at gaining wider recognition of their identity. Over the past 70 years, Cambodia has changed its name several times with the change of government. From 1953 to 1970, the country was known as the Kingdom of Cambodia; From 1970 to 1975 it was known as the Khmer Republic; From 1975 to 1979, it was also known as Democratic Kampuchea; From 1989 to 1993, Cambodia became the State of Cambodia. After the monarchy was restored in 1993, it was renamed the Kingdom of Cambodia. In 2020, the Netherlands changed its name in order to unify its name internationally, abandoning the more widely recognized name Holland and officially renaming the country with Netherlands, thus renewing its global image and trying to eliminate the confusion caused by two different names.
Over the past century, many countries have changed their names in order to escape the effects of colonialism. Zimbabwe, for example, abandoned its old name for Rhodesia after gaining independence in 1980; Sri Lanka, once known as Ceylon by the British Empire, also dropped the name Ceylon in 2011. Similar to Turkey, the Czech Republic has tried to change the abbreviation of its name from Czech to Czechia internationally. The reason is that Czech, when used alone, is an adjective, denoting Czech or Czech, and is similar in part to Türk in part, and does not well represent the meaning of the country; At the same time, there are also confusing names such as Czechlands and Czecho in the world. In 2013, newly appointed Czech President Miloš Zeman, unhappy with the highly confused and lowly recognized name, proposed replacing Czech with Czechia, but keeping the full name Czech Republic unchanged. In 2016, the new name Czechia was accepted by the United Nations and the European Union as the official name. However, in practical terms, the name did not really catch on, but was criticized for sounding too much like Chechnya.
Second, from a deeper perspective, this is actually the nationalism of Turkey's ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP). In recent years, the AKP has often been criticized for being "highly Islamic", "driving back in history", etc. The AKP proposed to change its name to remind us not to over-interpret its so-called Islamism , but to pay more attention to its nationalist side, in a sense, this should also be said to be a certain approach to Mustafa Kemal nationalism. In addition, Turkey has recently been at odds with the West over Finland and Sweden's accession to NATO,[21] and the core of the debate, and Turkey's most immediate concern, is actually the Kurdish issue. Behind Turkey's high-profile approach to the Kurdish issue this time is actually nationalism, and it is the nationalism of the main nation. This is good for the ruling clique to score.
Third, on a practical level, this is also the need of electoral politics. Erdogan's request in December 2021 to change the country's name to Türkiye was at a time when Turkey's inflation was at its worst and the country's economy was at its lowest. After Erdogan made this proposal, the attitude towards the name change in Turkey was divided into two factions. Supporters praised the government for "representing and expressing in the best possible way the culture, civilization and values of the Turkish nation"; Opponents, on the other hand, argue that Erdogan's move is nothing more than a preparation for the 2023 presidential election, symbolically distracting attention from the state of the country and the political crisis, and some have even joked that "this is the only recent move by Erdogan that has not helped the exchange rate to fall". However, we understand that turks generally support the replacement of Turkey with Türkiye, much like the conversion of the Hagia Sophia Museum back to a mosque in 2020, even some opponents of Erdogan. [24]
Unknowns: How effective is Turkey's name change?
At present, turkey's starting point for calling for the international change of its name is of course understandable, but in practice, it is likely to face no small problems and challenges, and the actual effect remains to be seen.
First of all, from the perspective of communication, the name Türkiye is not very conducive to communication. In writing, there is no "ü" letter in English, so it will face greater inconvenience in the actual operation process; In terms of pronunciation, the pronunciation of "ü" is not found in many languages. At present, Turkey has launched a series of campaigns to promote the new name, the most enthusiastic of which is the "Hello Türkiye" campaign launched on social media on January 13, 2022. On the same day, the press office of the Turkish Presidential Office shared a video on social media in which foreign tourists from different parts of the world said "Hello Türkiye", but the foreigners in the video did not actually say Türkiye, but according to the English pronunciation habit of Saying Turkiye (some similar to adding a ye sound at the end of Turkey). After all, it is already very difficult to change a conventional name, and it is even more difficult to change the name to a more unusable form.
Second, Turkey's current publicity for new names is showing a trend of high and low. Since the "Hello Türkiye" campaign, few influential and highly discussed events have reappeared. And after the United Nations adopted the new name Türkiye on June 1, turkey's state media outlet Anadolu News Agency did not even report it immediately, and did not put the news in a prominent position.
Finally, in essence, whether Turkey in English is written as Turkey or Türkiye, it is nothing more than a slight difference in pronunciation and no substantial change in form, and Turkey is still that Turkey, which does not substantially change Turkey itself. From this point of view, although the name change will have a certain impact, the impact may not be large. There is also a kind of joke in the international community, that is, people propose to change the name of turkey turkey to türkiye by the way. I don't know how the Turkish leader, who is clamoring for a name change, feels...
【This paper is a phased result of the major research project of the National Social Science Foundation of China (No. 21VGQ014)】
[1] Presidency. Use of the Phrase "Turkey" as a Brand, https://www.resmigazete.gov.tr/eskiler/2021/12/20211204-5.pdf
[2] Mehmet Tosun. 'Hello Turkiye' campaign kicks off to promote country's new global brand ，https://www.aa.com.tr/en/turkey/hello-turkiye-campaign-kicks-off-to-promote-countrys-new-global-brand/2472954
[3] Merve Aydogan, “Türkiye to submit official letter to UN, international organizations for new global brand”, https://www.aa.com.tr/en/turkey/turkiye-to-submit-official-letter-to-un-international-organizations-for-new-global-brand/2602078
[4] Betul Yuruk. "The UN changed the 'Turkey' in foreign languages to 'Turkey' following Ankara's request", https://www.aa.com.tr/tr/gundem/bm-ankaranin-talebinin-ardindan-yabanci-dillerdeki-turkeyi-turkiye-olarak-degistirdi/2603451
[5] It is not uncommon in history to call ourselves different from his name, such as when we call ourselves "China" and we are called "China" in Western Chinese, which is generally believed to be a change in the pronunciation of the word "Qin" (of course, there are different views on this) of the peoples of the Western Regions, and the Central Asian and Russian languages call China "Kitay", which may be related to their more contact with the Western Liao Dynasty; The Germans called themselves "German" and in English Germany, or "German". Japanese people call themselves nihon or nippon, but in Western language they call it Japan, which is supposed to come from Westerners hearing the Chinese pronunciation of "Japanese" in Chinese.
[6] Zan Tao, "The Discovery of Ottoman Turkey: History and Narrative", Peking University Press, June 2022, p. 13.
[7] Zan Tao, "From Bagh to Istanbul: The Great Changes in the Middle East from a Historical Perspective," Beijing: CITIC Publishing House, May 2022, p. 31.
[8] Bernard Lewis, The Rise of Modern Turkey, translated by Fan Zhonglian, Beijing: The Commercial Press, February 1982, p. 8.
[9] See Zan Tao, "From Modernism to Islamism: On the Evolution of the Dominant Ideology in Middle Eastern Islamic Society," Middle East Studies, No. 1, 2020.
[10] Turan (Persian: توران) refers to the lands along northeastern Iran. Turan and Iran are a set of relative concepts, and it is generally believed that Turan is a nomadic people and Iran is an agrarian people.
[11] Elie Kedourie, Nationalism in Asia and Africa, New York: The World Publishing Company, 1970, pp. 48-50.
[12] See Zan Tao, From Bagh to Istanbul: The Great Changes in the Middle East from a Historical Perspective, Beijing: CITIC Publishing House, May 2022, p. 31.
[13] Paul Pelliot, Notes on Marco Polo II, Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1963, pp. 864-865.
[14] For the etymology of "iye", see http://www.etimolojiturkce.com/kelime/iye
[15] Muharrem Ergin, The Book of Dede Korkut: Metin-Sözlük, Ankara: Ankara University Press, 1964, p. 14.
[16] Zan Tao, "Modern State and National Construction: A Study of Turkish Nationalism in the Early 20th Century," Beijing: Sanlian Bookstore, August 2011, p. 219.
[17] The Constitution of 1924, https://www.anayasa.gov.tr/tr/mevzuat/onceki-anayasalar/1924-anayasasi/
[18] 参见Burcu Kara, "Where does the name Turkey come from? The origin of the English name of Turkey", https://ungo.com.tr/2020/01/turkey-ismi-nereden-geliyor-turkiyenin-ingilizce-adinin-kokeni/
[19] See Webster's dictionary for the definition of "turkey", https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/turkey
[20] Czech Republic to change its name to ‘Czechia’, https://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/europe/czech-republic-to-change-its-name-to-czechia-1.2611789
[21] Merve Aydoğan. “President Erdoğan: For now, Turkiye's view on Finland, Sweden joining NATO not positive”, https://www.aa.com.tr/en/politics/for-now-turkiyes-view-on-finland-sweden-joining-nato-not-positive-president-erdogan/2587144, 2022-5-13.
[22] 参见Ma Xiaolin, Shen Shali. “Turkey has its own fish to fry in objecting Sweden and Finland’s NATO bid”, https://enapp.globaltimes.cn/article/1267244
[23] Jeri Clausing. “What’s in a Name? Why Turkey Is Now Türkiye”, https://www.afar.com/magazine/why-turkey-is-now-turkiye
[24] See Zan Tao, From Bagh to Istanbul: The Great Changes in the Middle East from a Historical Perspective, Beijing: CITIC Publishing House, May 2022, pp. 295-296.
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